Science Memes

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[–] Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 50 points 2 years ago (10 children)

There's a Paul Stamets video where he talks about how mushrooms are so closely related to humans that we both fight off similar pathogens and that is why they are so useful to us for medicine (penicillin for example.)

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[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 42 points 2 years ago (5 children)

In the Paul Stamets TED talk, he never says that humans specifically are genetically close to fungi. He said that between all the different kingdoms of life, animals and fungi were more biologically similar than any other two kingdoms.

That definitely explains why we can borrow useful defenses from fungi, like antibiotics, but it's definitely not a reason to believe that our immune systems would have any difficulties differentiating between certain fungi and our own bodies, at least not for reasons related to direct genetic similarities.

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[–] Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago

You're right, my word choice makes it seem like I was saying fungi and humans are genetically related. Thanks for clarifying.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There's an enormous difference between kingdoms, so being more similar still leaves us very far apart.

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[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago

That's true. To even get to the mushroom kingdom you have to jump into a lot of pipes.

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah the similarities make sense when you look at sponges and sea lilies and the like, but the difference between a mushroom and a mammal is incredibly vast

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[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 5 points 2 years ago

Our immune systems can tell the difference between human blood types. Let alone fungus vs human.